by Nisioisin
She used the stoop of our entryway to bend over into a fairly difficult-looking upside-down bridge position, supporting her weight on her neck.
“If you want to pass, you’re gonna have to defeat me first!”
“Bwahahahaha!”
Uhm…sorry.
Something about that gag cracked me up every time.
“Uhn…”
I reached out and honked Karen’s chest, which was emphasized by the bridge position.
Hey, stop touching your little sisters’ breasts so much!
“Ghakk!”
To judge from her reaction, she’d suffered critical damage.
She went head over heel across the front hall like she’d been electrocuted. Tumbling full circle, she stood back up with a dauntless grin.
“Hmph. You have defeated me, well done! You have passed the first test!”
“This skit isn’t over?”
“The second gatekeeper will not be so easy… Indeed! Prepare to be shocked, for he is our older brother!”
“I don’t have an older brother.” Just two little sisters, I said, shoving past Karen and slipping on my shoes.
“Boo! Come on, play along, Koyomi. You should have said, ‘Th-That can’t be! My brother died five years ago, protecting me!’ I’m doing my part here looking after the entrance like you said, okay?”
“I don’t recall asking you to monitor it like some character out of a boys’ manga. Just watch for people going out and coming in.”
“Out and in, huh? Hurrm. Out and in? Out and in, did you say? How can they go out before they’ve come in? If they don’t come in first, they can’t go out!”
“……”
She was getting on my nerves, but since I didn’t have an answer to that, I just ignored her. If Hanekawa was here, I’m sure she would have had a good response.
“Well, I’m going out, so let me through.”
“Heheh. I might let you, but when you return, are you sure you’ll be able to get back in?”
“You better let me in.”
Did she have a brain attached to her shoulders or was that just a watermelon?
“Hold on, though, going out where?” she asked me. “I thought you were supposed to be studying? You’ve got exams, young man!”
“Since when are you my boss? Anyway, umm…I have to go buy a study-aid.”
“Huh. Well then, godspeed.”
Karen had accepted one of my lies without the slightest suspicion again.
No wonder she got played by Kaiki… This went way beyond simply trusting her big brother.
Maybe I’d been wrong all along. Maybe Karen was even more loyal to me than Kanbaru was.
What a scary thought.
“Karen?”
“Yes?”
“We talked about this before, but what do you think justice is?”
“Being just. What else?”
“I see. Then what is the enemy of justice?”
“Hrm? Evil, naturally. Like that ominous dirtbag from the other day.”
“Yes, you’re right.” She was right. Karen’s straightforward answer elicited a nod from me. “But obvious villains like Kaiki are a minority. It’s hard to be so confirmed in your evil. Most people couldn’t be a scoundrel without some aesthetic or rationale. They end up establishing their own notions of what’s just.”
Deishu Kaiki was an exception among exceptions.
A fake among fakes.
While he did give voice to his views, he never once tried to assert their legitimacy. Indeed─he was anything but shy when it came to assuming the mantle of evil.
No matter what names Karen and Senjogahara called him, he never once tried to suggest that you had no one else to blame for being a sucker.
“So you see, broadly speaking─the enemy of justice is a different justice.”
“……”
“War is an excellent example. The Fire Sisters’ justice, too, is the enemy of justice from someone else’s point of view─as long as we insist on our own justness, there’s no telling when, or for what reason, we’ll wind up becoming an enemy of justice.”
The world wasn’t built on such simple binary oppositions─it was more complicated. It was freakier than that.
During spring break, during Golden Week, I learned that until I was sick of it.
I was still learning. It was a lifelong lesson.
“Karen. It can be hard to know the right time to say ‘cheating,’ don’t you agree? I know that you hate cheaters, and I don’t intend to affirm cheating. But when you think about it, being strong is like ‘cheating’ for the weak, and being weak is like ‘cheating’ for the strong. Strength can equal weakness. And being just is like ‘cheating’ for the unjust and evil. In which case only evil─isn’t cheating.”
Strength can be a weapon. Weakness, too, can be a weapon.
As for being just─it was a lethal weapon.
Only evil, the supposed polar opposite of justice─bravely came to the fight empty-handed.
“Surefire methods are cowardly, like you said, because it’s cheating. Whether it’s rock-paper-scissors or whatever. Only evil, which is fated to lose, isn’t cowardly.”
If justice always prevails, then evil is always vanquished.
Evil never prospers. Which is precisely why─
“Sorry, Koyomi. I don’t really get it,” interrupted Karen.
I guess it was too much for her─maybe she was too young for this kind of talk.
But if she was going to pursue justice, this was a hurdle she was going to face at some point, and sooner rather than later.
I decided to put it in simpler terms─so she would understand.
“Just by living, everybody becomes somebody’s enemy at some point. That’s all I meant.”
“If that’s true…” My words seemed to have hit their mark this time─but Karen responded with a question of her own, a look of uncertainty on her face. “What do you do then?”
“Hm?”
“When you become the enemy of justice. When you’ve done nothing wrong, and think you’re actually correct, but still wind up as the enemy of justice, what should you do?”
“If you can answer that question─you’re a defender of justice.”
I wouldn’t know, though, I shrugged my shoulders.
Maybe that didn’t cut it at all, after I’d put her on the spot. Maybe I was just taking things out on her with my line of questioning.
Hanekawa had actually told me as much once. It was during Golden Week.
─Araragi… You might become a star, but you could never become a hero.
It was harsh, but she was right.
What Hanekawa said─was always correct.
I was no defender of justice.
I wasn’t on the humans’ side, and I wasn’t on the aberrations’ side.
I was only on my sisters’ side.
An ordinary, dime-a-dozen big brother.
“All right then, off I go. Guard this place. Don’t let anyone in.”
“Just leave it to me! I am Karen Araragi, my brother’s orders are absolute!” Karen threw her head back and beat a fist against her chest. “For it is my brother who inspired the hatred of evil that burns in my heart, my brother who instilled in me the love of justice!”
“That’s a nasty responsibility…” I didn’t know how to respond other than to grimace and tell her no thanks.
She clearly wasn’t influenced by me.
Neither she nor Tsukihi were.
“Ah… I almost forgot. If Tsukihi wakes up while I’m gone, don’t let her out. She literally doesn’t go out or come in. Knock her out with a sleeper hold if you have to.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Why was she accepting my terrible order to choke out her sister? Karen wasn’t about absolute obedience so much as the type to just go ahead and do things out of sheer momentum.
Scary, scary.
Casting one last sidelong glance at her, I toed up my bicycle’s kicks
tand, straddled the seat, and began pedaling─I pointed the handles in the exact opposite direction of the bookstore, of course.
I was heading toward that ruined cram school building I knew so well─the name of which, as I had learned just today, was Eikow Cram School.
It was where Mèmè Oshino had once set up camp.
And now the onmyoji.
An expert on immortal aberrations─the aberration roller.
Yozuru Kagenui and Yotsugi Ononoki were based there.
“My lord, ye are going, then.”
Now that I noticed─before I’d even noticed, Shinobu was riding in my bicycle’s front basket in the reverse ET position.
While I was waiting for Karen to come home, the sun had set─in other words, the hour of aberrations was now upon us, when the moon shone bright and impudent in the sky.
It was Shinobu’s hour.
When night fell, her eyes sprang open, alert regardless of whether she’d been awake or asleep during the day. It was a testament to the fact that she was a monster and not an organism─even with her schedule all mixed up, she wasn’t about to sleep the night away.
Hence, her eyes─those golden irises of hers sparkled, more full of life than ever.
Not alive─but still full of life.
“Yes, I’m going.”
“Where? To do what?”
“To them. To fight.”
“For what?”
“For my sister.”
“And what will this gain thee?”
“Nothing. I lose a bit of time, that’s all.”
That was just our usual silly banter─I don’t care how many anime or live-action adaptations they were going to make, they’d never make a serious character out of me.
If a situation seemed dubious and inequitable─well, you just kept dividing by seven.
“I see.” Shinobu gave a nod. She looked somehow satisfied. “If ye choose to fight, there is aught I can do─after all, should thou perish, I too must share in that fate. I have no choice, then. For my own safety, I must join thee in thy fight.”
“You mean you’re going to help me?”
“But let me be clear, I disdain doing so─I find this odious, but I have no choice. I care not what becomes of thy littler kinswoman. I am only helping thee out of self-interest, to protect myself.”
“Your tsundere is so annoying,” I said─with a chuckle. “Ha, I thought you wanted to die? Whatever happened to you being the suicidal vampire?”
“Hmph. That was my original characterization, I’ve moved past that now. Nor am I taciturn now as I was in the middle act. I am a regular donut-loving mascot now.”
She didn’t even sound self-deprecating. Sarcastic, flippant─but optimistic, if anything.
“’Twas Tsukihi, correct?”
“Huh?”
“Thy littler kinswoman’s name.”
“Ah… I can’t believe you remembered it. You never remember human names.”
“Well, after hearing it rehearsed so incessantly… Not that I can distinguish her from other humans as a result─hmph. And ’tis a fine name.”
“A fine name? How so?”
“The tsuki means moon. This pleases me. The sun is my enemy─but the moon offers many boons. Mayhap this would be a good opportunity to return those favors.”
That is my excuse, she said─leaning back officiously in the front basket.
We hit a bump just as she did so, nearly causing us to lose balance.
“I see. Thank you.”
“Thanks are not necessary.”
“In that case, let me buy you more donuts next time. I may not be able to get you one of each, but I can probably afford to get a tray’s worth.”
“That is unnecessary. I do this only for my own sake─ergo, I will not seek any recompense.”
If ’tis a mere kindness, then I accept, Shinobu appended with a pushy, evil grin.
A ghastly smile.
She smiled like she might be an enemy of justice.
“Besides, I have my own grudge in this matter.”
“Huh? A grudge?” I asked her.
“Aye. That whelp of a maiden called me, a legendary vampire, a geriatric─I wish to teach her who she is dealing with.”
012
An ironblooded, hotblooded, yet coldblooded vampire, the king and slayer of aberrations, Shinobu had her existence robbed by me and her name bound by Mèmè Oshino, and lost nearly all of her combat skills─however, the truth was that it was incredibly easy for her to recover those powers.
She could do so at any time she chose. All she had to do was to drink my blood.
That would return her to her former vampiric glory─and liberate her from the girlish form she detested. She could reign once more as a mighty and invulnerable creature of the night.
It went without saying that the inevitable byproduct, a necessary side effect, of her doing so was that I’d become a vampire as well─as long as she did not suck me completely dry and leave me dead, that is.
On the other hand─and since she was now receiving energy directly from my shadow it needn’t be too frequent─if I refused to provide Shinobu with any blood, she would die before long. So easily that you wouldn’t know she’d once been immortal.
As the side effect of that, I would return to being completely human. No more after-effects, just a plain and simple human─it was a constant possibility, with which Shinobu tormented me relentlessly.
Shinobu becoming a vampire again.
Me becoming human again.
The two were depressingly equal.
But at the moment I wished for neither─neither the effect nor the side effect, neither the effect nor the counter-effect. I couldn’t fathom Shinobu’s heart, but for the moment at least, as far as I could tell, she was with me on this.
Therefore.
It was important─here─to limit the amount of blood Shinobu drew to a mere tasting, no more and no less.
Just like when we faced off against Kanbaru’s monkey─or further back when we faced off against Hanekawa’s cat.
Shinobu Oshino had to become a sort of monster.
Koyomi Araragi had to become a sort of monster.
It was just a matter of tuning up.
We weren’t going to be negotiating this time or talking things out. Unless we were more diligent about preparing for a fight, we’d wind up rehashing the battle at our front door─the conclusion to which would be far too painful for any amount of hindsight.
For my own part, I didn’t want to be folded up any more than I had to in one day─and it was unlikely Shinobu’s bluff would work a second time. No, even the first time, the bluff only prevailed thanks to the sympathetic vote.
To make matters worse, our opponent was an onmyoji specializing in immortal aberrations. There was no such thing as being too prepared─you might even say that no amount of preparation was going to be enough.
Shinobu and I fastened our teeth into each other’s neck, back and forth, draining our blood to and fro─until we got as close to the perfect balance as we were going to get.
And.
All prepared.
All ready.
All set─we arrived at the ruins of the former cram school to face off against Yozuru Kagenui and Yotsugi Ononoki.
“I see we have uninvited guests─Oshino would probably gab, ‘You’re late. I’ve been waiting for ages,’ but I’m not nearly the body for folk like he is.”
We were on the fourth floor of the building, in the classroom Oshino used most frequently as his den─out of the three on the fourth floor, it was the furthest one on the left from the stairwell.
The makeshift bed he’d constructed by joining together several desks with packing tape was still there, just as he’d left it.
It was also the classroom where I’d undergone my terrifying kidnapping ordeal the other day at the hands of Senjogahara before her subsequent rebirth.
Although Kagenui referred to us as uninvited guests, when I opened the
classroom door, they were already staring in our direction as though they were expecting us.
